Tonight I went to the all-media press screening for 300, which was shown in IMAX. I’m not gonna discuss the film, since that was already done here. Instead, I’ll talk about the quality of the presentation. I’ve never seen a regular movie on IMAX before – just some 3D IMAX movies that were CGI based (The Polar Express, The Ant Bully) – so I was curious to see how well it held up blown up. In that respect, 300 isn’t a good example, since the whole movie is so stylized and visually tweaked from a “normal” film. But that being said, it looked mighty impressive, with the enormous image keeping your eyeballs enthralled. There’s a bit of grain present, but it wasn’t as noticeable as I had feared it might be. The sound was good and loud (thankfully not as ear-splittingly loud as the first screening I saw at Warner Bros.), and overall I highly enjoyed the big-screen experience.
Not everyone enjoyed the film though – as we were leaving the theater, I overheard a snippet of a conversation behind me: “I don’t understand why they always make the minority out to be the bad guy. I mean, come on. The white guys against the Persians? That’s so transparent. It’s like that other movie that came out a few years ago about the crusades. What was that? Kingdom of Heaven. I don’t know why they don’t show the other side as the good guys.” Well, I suppose she’s a history major and understood that the Battle of Thermopylae took place 2,500 years ago, and it was about 300 Greek guys standing up against the invading Persian empire. Maybe she just wanted to see a movie about how the good guy Xerxes was able to squish 300 rabblerousers who were standing in his way of conquering Europe. I’m sure that would have been a MUCH better film.